Oklahoma recruit Jean Delance said he withdrew his commitment to coach Bob Stoops after seeing video that showed fraternity members at the school chanting racist remarks.
“Very uneducated people. I wouldn’t want my son or child to go there or to anywhere like that,” Delance told CBS 11 in Dallas-Fort Worth on Monday. “It was just very disturbing to me. I didn’t like it.”
Delance, a four-star offensive lineman who is ranked No. 272 on the ESPN Junior 300, committed to the Sooners last November and visited Norman with his mother, Altavian, last weekend.
But when they returned to their home in Mesquite, Texas, the video, in which members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon also indicated that African-Americans would never be admitted to the fraternity, prompted them to rethink the commitment.
“I’ve had family history in racial issues, inequality,” Altavian Delance told CBS 11. “Jean knows these things are serious to us.”
Stoops and several Sooners players attended a protest, which captured the attention of national media, outside the fraternity on Monday. Men’s basketball coach Lon Kruger also was seen at the gathering.
“It’s sad the ignorance that can still be there with some people,” Stoops told the Tulsa World. “It’s just appalling.
“I was here to be with my guys. We all work with beautiful young men and women of all races. It’s just — very little gets me choked up. But that hurt.”
The football team canceled its scheduled Monday practice. Instead, players and coaches held a short vigil inside the practice facility. The players, wearing all black, then left, walking in rows locked arm in arm.
Sigma Alpha Epsilon has said that an investigation confirmed the contents of the video and announced it was closing the local chapter. University of Oklahoma president David Boren released a statement saying that members had until midnight Tuesday to remove their personal belongings from the fraternity house.
“These people have acted in a way that’s absolutely reprehensible and disgraceful,” Boren said. “Real Sooners are not bigots, racists.”
The national fraternity released a statement Sunday night saying it was “embarrassed” by the “unacceptable and racist” behavior.
Of course, no one has asked the Black Student Association their thoughts on the matter. But, all the usual suspects are swinging into action. The parents of a child in the ESPN story, in a sane world, would be mocked mercilessly for being so stupid, but we no longer live in a sane world. In modern America, the most racist people are blacks. They are strongly encouraged to obsess over their skin color. A black person who does not experience the world exclusively through his blackness is deemed insufficiently black.
I’m no fan of fraternities so I have little sympathy for the idiots at the heart of it. By their age, they should know better. I have even less sympathy for the school for making fools of themselves over it. In modern America, however, worship of black people requires these public acts of piety, no matter how ridiculous.
Blacks in America are what the Olympian Gods used to be for the Ancient Greeks.
Blackity black, black, black blackety black black.
Dunno why this is such a big story- I heard on the radio this morning that some of the young men in question have been kicked out of the university. Kicked out for using racial slurs? Yikes!
BTW like the new look.
Come now the biggest racists are big ad agencies. Watch closely and you will almost never see ads with interracial couples. I’m pretty sure this reflects some strong research showing that blacks would take it poorly to show racial mixing. Most whites got over this a long time ago